Crawford & Co (CRD.B) Has Fallen 23% in Last One Year, Underperforms Market

If you are looking for the best ideas for your portfolio you may want to consider some of Palm Valley Capital Management’s top stock picks. Palm Valley Capital, an investment management firm, is bullish on Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) stock. In its Q2 2019 investor letter – you can download a copy here – the firm discussed its investment thesis on Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) stock. Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) is the world’s largest independent claims management company.

On July 1, 2019, Palm Valley Capital had released its Q2 2019 investor letter. The investment firm said that Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) was one of the ten equities that the fund held in Q2 2019. The stock has posted a return of -22.7% in the trailing one year period, underperforming fund’s benchmark the S&P Small Cap 600 Index which returned -2.2% in the same period. This suggests that the investment firm was wrong in its decision. On a year-to-date basis, Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) stock has fallen by 31.4%.

Palm Valley Capital fund posted a return of 0.7% from April 30, 2019 through June 30, 2019, outperforming fund’s benchmark the S&P Small Cap 600 Index which returned -1.9% in the same period. Let’s take a look at comments made by Palm Valley Capital about Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) in the Q2 2019 investor letter.

“Crawford & Co. is one of the world’s largest independent providers of claims management services to insurance companies and self-insured entities. Demand is tied to industrywide claims volumes, weather events, economic activity, employment, and workplace injuries, as well as the propensity for insurers to outsource adjusting work. A restructuring program has significantly improved underlying profitability in Crawford’s core businesses, but this was overshadowed by a declining contribution from administering class action services related to the BP oil spill. The class action business was sold last year, which allowed Crawford to reduce debt. We own Crawford’s Class B voting shares, which have historically sold at periodic premiums to the Class A nonvoting shares but traded at a discount during June as a result of anticipated rebalancing of Russell indexes.”

In Q2 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) stock remained unchanged from the previous quarter (see the chart here). Our calculations showed that Crawford & Co (NYSE:CRD.B) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 185% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 109 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in America to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. You can subscribe to our free enewsletter below to receive our stories in your inbox:

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.